"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep," Obama cautioned. Young and charismatic but with little experience on the national level, Obama smashed through racial barriers and easily defeated ...

<quoted text>Is bushie boy still looking for his wmd's son? Is he still at 'battle stations' just like he told his staff to be in 08/2001?

Is Obama still sleeping while Americans are butchered in the East?BTW Squats how many of our people have been killed over there where Obama said he was shutting down the wars.What happened squats, your boy lied and Americans died.I just wish when our people are in trouble that Obama would man the "battle stations" like all American presidents before him did.

<quoted text>Son, or should I call you the more formal Sonic? Let me just say that I deplore the Tea Party culture and all it stands for.Theyre a bunch of activists who are mostly salt-of-the-earth, hardworking Americans who, previous to their activism in 2009, had never marched with placards or attended rallies or town halls.It's awful how their rallying cry was and is the rule of law and getting government off their backs. The tea-party movement is and was organized around clear and abiding political principles  the very principles that formed the basis for Americas unique experiment in self-governance. They include constitutionally limited government, human rights that descend from our Creator rather than privileges bestowed by government and, more generally, a commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.Now Son, you and I are more the renegade Occupy Wall Street types. Am I right? Or am I right? We have more in common with jobless (unless I'm elected Mayor of course), directionless riff-raff who dont think government can ever be big enough if their every need is not being addressed.The occupiers apparently have no interest in self-governance and like Obama and most Democrats seek to extend government control in the interest of forcible redistribution of wealth at the expense of individual liberty.Yep, like our President, they are not interested or concerned with the strict limits the Constitution places on the federal government. Rather, we prefer a central government without any restrictions on its power. Human rights to us occupier types are really privileges from government that can be bargained for with loud voices and votes. Of course, privileges can be taken away by governments that grant them.Now, the left leaning media loved us and promoted our agenda over the tea-party focus. For two years the media tried to vilify the Tea Party because they saw a remarkable and inexplicable phenomenon  normal, hardworking, flag-waving Americans who had never before in their lives marched in a demonstration or carried placards in a rally mobilizing in the streets behind the idea of returning to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the glue that held the republic together for 230-plus years.Nope, the biased in our favor media preferred the change agents who they had championed during the 1960s and 1970s and right through the beginning of the 21st century and who reappeared in their typical anti-American form as occupiers. You know, like you and I who occupy this topix page.After the tea-party activists rallied on the Capitol Mall in Washington in record numbers, they left the ellipse cleaner and tidier than they found it. The occupiers on the other hand, left feces and litter and a crime wave behind. Oh man, the media would have so preferred it had been the other way around.But that damn Tea Party culture was full of decent people who were respectfully protesting and not raping, stealing and ruining where ever they were like the Occupiers.Ill bet you were as disappointed as I was. If I become Mayor, Im letting the Occupiers back into any city park they want, because that will help lower my homeless shelter budget and give the police something to do instead of stopping & frisking the usual hoodie wearing thugs with guns.

The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires

By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business

<quoted text>Love the way you change the rules so not a majority means "super majority".I said majority, not super majority. I just love the way you weasels spin like crazy. It's impossible to have an honest discussion with you.

Let me clarify it for you. A super majority was necessary due to the excessive use of the filibuster by republican Senators. So your still incorrect to imply that President Obama could have gotten any thing that he wanted through the senate. Who is really being dishonest? Spin on that.

RNC Threatens NBC, CNN: Cancel Hillary Projects Or Lose GOP DebatesThe Republican National Committee is flexing its acutely atrophied muscles this morning with a nearly impotent threat aimed at their foes in the mainstream media.This is just too funny. RNC chair Reince Priebus has sent letters to the heads of CNN and NBC to protest their plans to produce projects about Hillary Clinton, who is a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Priebus is very upset and is issuing an ultimatum to the networks that will surely cause them to lose sleep  due to their uncontrollable fits of laughter.What isnt so funny is a political party that thinks it has the right to demand that entertainment producers bend to its will. In fact, its an open assault on freedom of expression. It would be one thing for the RNC to decline to work with a network that it believes has a partisan slant against them. But it is something else entirely to threaten a network in order to force them to alter specific programming.Priebus begins his missive by whining about the perceived bias that has been a part of the GOP gospel for decades:Its appalling to know executives at major networks like NBC and CNN who have donated to Democrats and Hillary Clinton have taken it upon themselves to be Hillary Clintons campaign operatives.Appalling indeed! Im sure that Priebus is just as disturbed by the million dollar gift that Fox News (News Corp) gave to the Republican Governors Association, and all the other right-wingers at Fox who have donated to Republicans, including News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch. And there is no network that has so brazenly acted as a partisan campaign operative than Fox News, the PR division of the GOP. Priebus letter to Fox must still be in the mail. In the meantime, he is making his position to CNN and NBC crystal clear:If they have not agreed to pull this programming prior to the start of the RNCs Summer Meeting on August 14, I will seek a binding vote stating that the RNC will neither partner with these networks in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates they sponsor.Oh my. If CNN and NBC were unable to acquire any of the GOP primary debates they might be forced to schedule interesting and entertaining programs instead. Thatll show em.Lets face it, the RNC has never been thrilled about putting their candidates in situations where they might face fair questions about their records and policy positions. They herd them onto Fox News where they can expect softballs and gushing praise. During the 2012 campaign right-wingers like Hugh Hewitt and Breitbarts John Nolte were counseling the RNC to ban debates hosted by what they believed to be unfriendly media. Sarah Palin was advising Republicans to speak through Fox News.The best thing that could happen to the Democrats is for Republicans to sequester themselves in the bosom of Fox News. It would limit their exposure to the broader electorate and the independents they need to win. It would also insure that their candidates were unvetted and unprepared for the real-life battles of a campaign. If they spend the primary season being fluffed by Fox, when they eventually face the general election they will be surprised by sharp criticisms from which they were shielded in their chummy primary.One positive aspect of this strategy is that fewer voters, and a more narrow, conservative subset, would see the primary telecasts. Considering how often the GOP candidates in 2012 embarrassed themselves, that could be a benefit. Of course, those segments would still be looped on every other news broadcast the following day, so the benefit would be short lived.http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/...

Priebus is wrong.

Republicans should refuse any debates, primary or general election, that involve biased talking heads from the Obama media.

To Stop al-Qaeda, Stop Bombing & Occupying Muslim LandsApparently, the threat is both serious and specific.The United States ordered 22 diplomatic missions closed and issued a worldwide travel alert for U.S. citizens.

Does Obama care about American citizens in those countries, or just about embassy personnel?

Obamas US Government Protection of Al-Qaeda Terrorists and the US-Saudi Black HoleFor almost two centuries American government, though always imperfect, was also a model for the world of limited government, having evolved a system of restraints on executive power through its constitutional arrangement of checks and balances.

Since 9/11 however, constitutional American government has been overshadowed by a series of emergency measures to fight terrorism. The latter have mushroomed in size and budget, while traditional government has been shrunk.

As a result we have today what the journalist Dana Priest has called

two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre  and its entirety visible only to God.[1]

More and more, it is becoming common to say that America, like Turkey before it, now has what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman have called a deep state behind the public one.[2] And this parallel government is guided in surveillance matters by its own Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which according to the New York Times has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court.[3] Thanks largely to Edward Snowden, it is now clear that the FISA Court has permitted this deep state to expand surveillance beyond the tiny number of known and suspected Islamic terrorists, to any incipient protest movement that might challenge the policies of the American war machine.

Americans have by and large not questioned this parallel government, accepting that sacrifices of traditional rights and traditional transparency are necessary to keep us safe from al Qaeda attacks. However secret power is unchecked power, and experience of the last century has only reinforced the truth of Lord Actons famous dictum that unchecked power always corrupts. It is time to consider the extent to which American secret agencies have developed a symbiotic relationship with the forces they are supposed to be fighting  and have even on occasion intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots.

Intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots? These words as I write them make me wonder yet again, as I so often do, if I am not losing my marbles, and proving myself to be no more than a zany conspiracy theorist. Yet I have to remind myself that my claim is not one coming from theory, but from certain undisputed facts, about incidents that are true even though they have been systematically suppressed or under-reported in the American mainstream media. CONT.

<quoted text>Drones are reserved for non-judicial capital punishment of American citizens.

The 'Drone war' started in the Bush 43 Administration to little fanfare or criticism by Congress or the free press and continued under Obama has finally peaked and is declining as the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have ended and allies like Pakistan, Yemen , Afghanistan, and Iraq take over more responsibility for their own defense. Secretary of State John Kerry just announced an agreement with Pakistan to end the 'drone war' there.

Cont. Worse, I am describing a phenomenon that occurred not just once, but consistently, almost predictably. We shall see that, among the al-Qaeda terrorists who were first protected and then continued their activities were

1) Ali Mohamed, identified in the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 68) as the leader of the 1998 Nairobi Embassy bombing;

2) Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Ladens close friend and financier while in the Philippines of Ramzi Yousef (principle architect of the first WTC attack) and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (next)

4) Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, whose presence in the United States was concealed from the FBI by CIA officers for months before 9/11.[4]

It might sound from these three citations that the 9/11 Commission marked a new stage in the U.S. treatment of these terrorists, and that the Report now exposed those terrorists who in the past had been protected. On the contrary, a principal purpose of my essay is to show that

1) one purpose of protecting these individuals had been to protect a valued intelligence connection (the Al-Qaeda connection if you will);

2) one major intention in the 9/11 Commission Report was to continue protecting this connection;

3) those on the 9/11 Commission staff who were charged with this protection included at least one commission member (Jamie Gorelick), one staff member (Dietrich Snell) and one important witness (Patrick Fitzgerald) who earlier had figured among the terrorists protectors.

In the course of writing this essay, I came to another disturbing conclusion I had not anticipated. This is that a central feature of the protection has been to defend the 9/11 Commissions false picture of al-Qaeda as an example of non-state terrorism, at odds with not just the CIA but also the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In reality, as I shall show, royal family protection from Qatar and Saudi Arabia (concealed by the 9/11 Commission) was repeatedly given to key figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

This finding totally undermines the claim that the wars fought by America in Asia since 9/11 have been part of a global war on terror. On the contrary, the result of the wars has been to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in the oil- and gas-rich regions of Central Asia, in alliance with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan  the principal backers of the jihadi terrorist networks the U.S. been supposedly fighting. Meanwhile the most authentic opponents in the region of these Sunni jihadi terrorists  the governments of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran  have found themselves overthrown (in the case of Iraq and Libya) subverted with U.S. support (in the case of Syria), or sanctioned and threatened as part of an axis of evil(in the case of Iran). We should not forget that, just one day after 9/11,Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the objectives of our response and getting Iraq.[5]

The protection to terrorists described in this essay, in other words, has been sustained partly in order to support the false ideology that has underlain U.S. Asian wars for more than a decade. And the blame cannot be assigned all to the Saudis. Two months before 9/11, FBI counter-terrorism expert John ONeill described to the French journalist Jean-Charles Brisard Americas impotence in getting help from Saudi Arabia concerning terrorist networks. The reason? In Brisards paraphrase,Just one: the petroleum interests.[6] Former CIA officer Robert Baer voiced a similar complaint in complained about the lobbying influence of the Foreign Oil Companies Group, a cover for a cartel of major petroleum companies doing business in the Caspian.... The deeper I got, the more Caspian oil money I found sloshing around Washington.[

OBAMAS US Government Protection of Al-Qaeda Terrorists and the US-Saudi Black Hole For almost two centuries American government, though always imperfect, was also a model for the world of limited government, having evolved a system of restraints on executive power through its constitutional arrangement of checks and balances.

Since 9/11 however, constitutional American government has been overshadowed by a series of emergency measures to fight terrorism. The latter have mushroomed in size and budget, while traditional government has been shrunk.

As a result we have today what the journalist Dana Priest has called

two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre  and its entirety visible only to God.[1]

More and more, it is becoming common to say that America, like Turkey before it, now has what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman have called a deep state behind the public one.[2] And this parallel government is guided in surveillance matters by its own Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which according to the New York Times has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court.[3] Thanks largely to Edward Snowden, it is now clear that the FISA Court has permitted this deep state to expand surveillance beyond the tiny number of known and suspected Islamic terrorists, to any incipient protest movement that might challenge the policies of the American war machine.

Americans have by and large not questioned this parallel government, accepting that sacrifices of traditional rights and traditional transparency are necessary to keep us safe from al Qaeda attacks. However secret power is unchecked power, and experience of the last century has only reinforced the truth of Lord Actons famous dictum that unchecked power always corrupts. It is time to consider the extent to which American secret agencies have developed a symbiotic relationship with the forces they are supposed to be fighting  and have even on occasion intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots.

Intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots? These words as I write them make me wonder yet again, as I so often do, if I am not losing my marbles, and proving myself to be no more than a zany conspiracy theorist. Yet I have to remind myself that my claim is not one coming from theory, but from certain undisputed facts, about incidents that are true even though they have been systematically suppressed or under-reported in the American mainstream media.

Worse, I am describing a phenomenon that occurred not just once, but consistently, almost predictably. We shall see that, among the al-Qaeda terrorists who were first protected and then continued their activities were

1) Ali Mohamed, identified in the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 68) as the leader of the 1998 Nairobi Embassy bombing;

You don't understand the fundamentals of foreign policy. Caution is a virtue in any foreign policy. Closing the embassies for the few days at the height of Islam's holiest religious holiday suggests a respect for Moslems that I bet won't go unrecognized or unrewarded .

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